From the CEO’s Desk

“A new beginning” – this aptly describes the Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) in 2018 as I join as Chief Executive and Dr Lim Zi Yi taking over as President of the board earlier this year. To say that it will be a challenge to take on the role can be a bit of an understatement, but I truly believe in the cause and I joined the organisation with a mission to bring the team forward as well as a passion to further its current successes in saving lives.As we are reaching the end of our three-year project to add a total of 50,000 new donors onto the register, we are thankful of the momentum built up in the past few years. We are also glad that we have achieved a higher number of patient-donor match and our tissue typing protocol conforms to that of the most sophisticated registers in the world. Within the Asia region, ours is the most advanced with donors typed at 6 loci on the gene. All these counts towards the saving of yet more lives. This is the mission which keeps us going.Building up our donor registry is our top priority. However, the lack of public awareness remains one of the major challenges in getting people to sign up and we hope to change this perception. We will do more – from conducting talks at schools and tertiary institutions, encouraging student activism, holding roadshows at malls and presentations to companies, statutory boards and public sector organisations. We will also build a corp of volunteers to help us in our mission.I like to challenge more to join us on this mission as a donor and/or a volunteer.